


In My Heart Like A Fire (Shut Up In My Bones)

by Meduseld



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, Reverse Big Bang Challenge, Reverse Chronology, Soldiers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:01:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21516460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meduseld/pseuds/Meduseld
Summary: Sam and Riley: a love story for parts
Relationships: Riley/Sam Wilson
Comments: 16
Kudos: 16
Collections: Marvel Reverse Big Bang 2019





	1. The fic

**Author's Note:**

> Fic for [multifandomfics'](https://archiveofourown.org/users/multifandomfics/) amazing art, which [you can find here](https://karadanverss.tumblr.com/post/189558980262/one-of-my-contributions-for-the).  
> Thank you to [flightyrock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightyrock/pseuds/flightyrock) for the beta and to V, who gets me (and promised me a very specific meal).

_(He moves to Washington, after, wanting to be close to his bones)_

**V.**

**Spera District, Khost Province, Afghanistan**

The air is so cold and thin that it hurts Sam’s lungs when he breathes in. 

The mountain skies are blue, the clouds stretched thin like the branches of leaves. 

It’s actually beautiful, this desolate country, not that he’ll admit it when Riley slams a fist into his shoulder, with a smirk and a “breathtaking, huh?”. Asshole. 

They’ve flown more missions here in Afghanistan than anywhere else, any other kind of flight made impossible by the mountains and the weather and the RPGs. Sam is half in love with the country, and all in love with Riley. 

He would follow him into any mission, and away from it all if he wanted. Riley just wants that sky, the mission, so that others may live because they’re living enough for a thousand together. He’s a poetic drunk, but Sam knew that already. 

It’s just endearing now. Or more endearing. 

“They sending us out yet?” he says instead, only looking at Riley out of the corner of his eye because if he looks at him full on in this light he’s going to do something truly stupid. He’s just not sure if he’d go for a kiss or a headlock. 

Riley deserves one more than the other. 

Especially since last winter when they’d gone to Sam’s mother’s house, the one that Sam had grown up in lifetimes ago. Riley had looked like every day was Christmas morning, like he couldn’t really believe it was all true, that there were families like this outside of a television set. 

Sam hadn’t said the words out loud, because old habits die hard, but his mother hadn’t blinked. She’d only set up the couch on the first night, and when it hadn’t been slept in by morning, she’d gathered up the linens without a word. 

One night, she’d squeezed the crook of Sam’s elbow as he was washing dishes, and he knew she meant that she liked Riley, liked him for Sam. In the other room, Riley had been helping vacuum, grinning like he’d never been more fulfilled. He’d realized then that he hadn’t just kept his mouth shut because he had to, or because the ink on the new policy hadn’t dried by then or even the memory of his father. It was because he trusted her judgement over all. And she’s understood perfectly and approved. 

It had been good. 

Flying still felt better. But not as good as Riley, the night when his mother had gone out to some neighborhood party and they’d had the whole house and bed to themselves. 

Sam had never seen anything more beautiful than that, Riley riding him like he had nothing to lose. The light had played on the Angel of Mercy tattooed on his bicep, looking down at Sam with love and no judgement, and the silvery shrapnel scar along his middle, burning into Sam’s brain. 

No matter how long he lived, that magic winter night would be there, tucked behind his ribs by his heart. Home, for real and true. 

“Fuck you” he says, breath trailing out with the words. “Wish you would” Riley says at the sky. Sam elbows him, both of them smiling. 

They’re doing what they mostly do on the job, hurrying up to wait and wait and wait some more. 

Even if it never changed, just part of life when deployed, Sam couldn’t keep from getting sick of the rumors. 

They knew the mountains were dotted with caves and men, and filled in the blanks on their own. Bin Laden might be gone, but the snake was still writhing, even without its head. Or just new ones, like the Ten Rings, instead. 

Every day there were new whispers about what was next, why they were here, what the big mission was. Some even whispered that it might be something to do with Captain America himself, who’d come back like King Arthur to save them from their sins if you were on the more patriotic end. Sam wasn’t, but he understood the urge, the helplessness that came with the Battle of New York and being attacked on your own ground. 

It was a deep sting, watching on television, useless half a world away, not even their wings fast enough to carry them where they needed to be. 

No one had noticed the way they had squeezed each other’s hands, knocking their knuckles on the underside of the cheap mess table, staring at the screen alongside everyone else. 

Before all that, there’d been some idle talk between them, the way they always did, saying more with their eyes than their words, but nothing they could make official. DADT might be gone but there wasn’t any way they could fly together with rings on their fingers, and Sam was halfway to wanting one but not the other. 

At the very least, he’d joked, he wanted them both buried in the same earth someday. “We will be, Sammy, our dumb asses will get killed together somewhere no one can point to on a map,” Riley had grinned back, and Sam had stolen his bacon in retaliation. 

After the sky opened with aliens, they hadn’t talked about it again, taken their orders eagerly. They were the old guys now, surrounded by kids that looked like they should still be studying, eager for something Sam and Riley had more than enough of. Half of them think they cheated their way to special forces, no matter what their record says, even when they're kids that have never been in combat. Soon, that won't be true, one way or another. 

He’s not sure all of them will stand it when the time comes for being under fire or worse. Sam’s seen more than one breakdown over things as small as a burst of distant bombing, called in by their own radios. And seen people keep their head when their buddy gets his legs blown off. Even knowing all that doesn’t guarantee their respect. 

There’s time though, at least now, kicking rocks along a landscape that looked like the Moon under the now cloudless, icy blue. 

Earlier, they'd taken a practice flight, looping in the weak dawn light, too high on adrenaline and each other to feel cold. 

The suits aren’t common knowledge, but they're not exactly secret anymore, either. Sightings are strictly cannot-confirm-or-deny, and most people assume it's some Iron Man-style nonsense. 

They're avenging angels, and that's still all Sam's ever wanted to be. He might be his father's son after all. 

Riley wasn't, only like him in his eyes and the affection he had for the horses on base, a necessary throwback when in this country. 

Sometimes Afghanistan felt like the land time forgot, or maybe time just flowed differently there. He knew intellectually the number of days he'd been there, but they felt like both too many and not enough when they were finally called into the command tent.

There they found an officer who couldn't be saluted and whose name couldn't be spoken out loud frowning down at a map. 

"I've got a job for you boys" he said with a sigh, blue eyes deep set and bloodshot in his face. He tapped a spot in the mountains with a dirty fingernail: BAHKMALA it said, neatly labeled by hand. 

"Extraction" he said then shook his head "more like rescue. Either of you heard of Khalid Khandil?" "The warlord?" they ask in unison, shooting each other a glance. 

"And a great friend of the USA. Holder of all sorts of special knowledge. Not to mention currently pinned down by all kinds of assholes that want him deader than disco," the officer said, staring at them hard, willing them to understand. 

"So we're support? Standard rescue mission?" Riley asked, playing dumb. He was better at it than Sam was, more skilled at getting them to say more than they should. Sam usually lost patience. 

The officer shook his head, disgusted, but it was hard to say at who. "You're the main attraction. I can't get anything else in the air close, too many damn RPGs. It's a night mission. Drop in, pick up the package, fly out. And then we bomb it to hell." _Which is what we'll do if you fuck up anyway, no matter if you can get out or not_ , he doesn't say. 

Sam has a lot of questions. Mainly, if the officer has any concept of how hard it is to hold a man in the air if he doesn't want to be there, and how it's a thousand times worse at night, no matter how many times he’s done it. 

But Riley will be the one to ask, like he can read the questions in Sam's head. They're partners, after all. 

When they're dismissed, Sam traces his fingers over the back of Riley's hand, then slips on his gloves. 

The sun is going down, and tomorrow they start prepping the mission for real. 

"Race me to the mess?" Riley says with a smile and Sam runs, lungs burning, feeling free. 

They have tonight. They have forever. 

**IV.**

**Tallil Air Base, Nasiriyah, Iraq**

It’s not like Sam didn’t know that, as a rule, Marines are fucking idiots. But this is something else. 

Nearly two weeks of being on base with the largest contingent he’s ever had to share space with, and being used as an unofficial medic to keep the proper authorities from finding out just how stupid they can be, is wearing on him. By now he’s fixed a couple of faces accidentally roasted by ramen in coffee pots, stitched injuries from knife games gone too far and picked out over thirty staples from someone’s back. It’s barely worth it. 

Even if it’s lining his pockets with contraband and his head with interesting facts. And worrying ideas. 

That and the fact that’s perfect flying weather, planes touching off constantly and Sam is grounded. 

It already felt unreal, wings that he could maneuver like his own limbs, no longer bound to anything but his own will. 

But now, after so long in monotony, it felt impossible that it had ever been true, that there were any EXO suits anywhere, much less in heavily secured crates waiting to travel with him to a more secret base and the first actual missions they would ever fly. 

Just the sort of fever dream a posting like this would give him. 

The only thing that still made it feel real, the only trace he had that it actually happened, was the still vivid sense memory of the call, like a bath in battery acid. 

The shock of the MPs shaking him awake, telling him he was being summoned, smack in the middle of the night, Riley in tow, to a secret office base, the four letters he was in violation of gnawing a hole in his gut.

Instead of compromising photos, one hell of a reprimand and a dishonorable discharge, he found the colonel giving them orders at the time waiting like a nervous third grader alongside a five star and a man from an agency that didn't officially exist. 

Fifty minutes later, they were packed and on their way to a base in Nevada with only a vague notion of what they were meant to do and the certainty that they’d be dead men if they breathed a word of it to anyone. 

On the final leg of the trip, in the dark belly of a chopper, stars out and blades whirling noisily overhead, Riley had shifted his leg so the backs of their hands were only just touching. It had been enough to settle the roiling Sam hadn't noticed in the back of his head. It had taken that long to realize that he wasn't angry at Riley, that he'd been afraid that it might be the other way around. But he was just half crazy with panic, the instinct so irrational it registered as true. They’d never name the monster out loud, D-A-D-T, the four letters that made up the sword over their head, the constant terror of what would happen if they were ever caught out. It felt a little like going back for a new round of Russian roulette after a miraculous win. 

But they'd walked into the base the same way they would walk out months later, shoulders newly callused and feet itching for flight: together. 

Even more tightly linked, now, having flown in perfect circles together the tips of their wings never touching. 

There hadn’t been any night touching, either, even as the other candidates dwindled and disappeared. Riley and Sam had smirked at the fact that the brass even thought anybody but a PJ could handle a Falcon. No matter where else they’d been pulled from, NASA and SHIELD and the Navy and who knows where else, none of them had made it, even as Riley and Sam climbed higher and higher, like they’d been born for it. The first men, forged unknowingly just for this. 

Afterward, when the news was official, he’d gone with Riley to some dingy little tattoo parlor in the tiny speck of humanity that passed as the nearest town and watched him get a new one, wings sprouting from his heels like new life. It was the most tempted he’s ever been to get ink of his own, though the healing process, and his mother’s voice in his head ended the desire almost as quickly as it had come. 

It feels, paradoxically, like both yesterday and years ago. Two days later they’d had their last practice flight, buzzing through staged explosions deep in a different desert, before being sent out here, through a gauntlet of airports and interminable waits. 

Sam already feels in withdrawal though he’s not sure for what, flight or Riley himself. 

He’s aware that he and Riley are just helping each other out, their job and their preferences making any other relationship near impossible and hookups too complicated. 

He can’t help but feel it though, mental catalogue full of every single one of Riley’s scars and tattoos and moans. 

The only people he’s touched in ages are self-preservation impaired marines and the occasional clumsy officer, while dodging questions about their role here and the gear they brought with them. Not Riley, even if they spend every free minute together.

A protein bar smacks him in the chest, pulling him out of his head. 

“Piss-free, I promise,” Riley smiles at him, looking tired in the corners of his mouth. “Since you’ve been walking around like someone took a whiz in your breakfast,” he says, eyes overly serious for it. Like he means something else. 

Sam hasn't eaten enough, that’s true, but he feels calmer now, with the bar in his stomach. Even if Riley really is up to something.

He tilts his dirty blonde head at the tent flap and Sam follows, cautious. They walk under the punishing dusty light of the sun, the sky baking with it, just as the instant synch of their stride started conspiring to put him at ease. 

“I’ve come to a decision,” Riley says, as they come up on a lonely storage shed that’s poorly built and too uncomfortably damp to even smoke in, if you did that, or whatever illicit activity you were in to. 

No one came here, unless it was for something truly terrible. The protein bar turns into a lump of iron in his gut. 

In his peripheral, Riley’s smile has gone sharp. 

“I want your cock in my mouth,” he says, giving to the smirk, reveling in Sam’s slack jawed expression. 

They’ve never addressed this thing so directly, not even as a joke. Especially not after the night they learned about SHIELD. Sam is half convinced they really are all-knowing. 

But there’s no one around, but even if there was, that was the sort of comment that didn’t raise eyebrows around here, as long as Riley laughs and punches Sam’s shoulder. He doesn’t. 

Instead he leads Sam into the storage shed and its awful air, blocking the door behind them, leading Sam back around damaged cardboard and broken pallets. They won’t have been seen, not by anyone that might on the very off chance, walk in, and they won’t be missed if they do this quick. 

And from the way Sam’s pulse is suddenly thudding in his throat and in his groin, his whole skin buzzing with _yes_ , it’s not going to take much. 

Riley doesn’t do anything fancy, just sighs with his whole body as he hits his knees, nuzzling his forehead against Sam’s middle as he opens his pants. Sam has to swallow down the sounds he wants to make, to loud even here. 

He looks down at Riley, swallowing Sam down like a sacrament, eyes closed and cheeks hollowed in devotion. 

Sam throws his head back, thunking dully on the dirty walls, fist in his mouth, teeth worrying at his knuckles. 

His mouth tastes like dust and blood and salt and the distant memory of Riley’s skin in the back of his throat. 

They don’t last, like Sam knew they wouldn’t. His orgasm tears from him like stitches out of a wound, and Riley groans around Sam, fist in his own pants and like that he’s done too, breathing heavy and leaning against Sam’s thigh.

Between his knees there’s a puddle that they’ve made together. 

His heart is still racing and there’s a wildness in Sam’s blood suddenly, pulling him up to bring their foreheads together, feeling raw. They’ve never kissed, he realizes, like a hammer on his chest. 

“I thought you were gonna tell me you were going home, asshole,” he says, voice hoarse like he was the one on his knees. 

Riley grins, wounded and dopey, pupils still blown wide, just as torn open. 

“I’m home with you,” he says, blinking fast, like he can’t believe he said it either. 

Sam has to kiss him, deep and sure, Riley sagging against him, a puppet with his strings cut, hands grasping with the desperation of the drowning, breathing deep. 

So it’s love. So that's it. 

And Sam feels fine. Better, actually. 

No one looks at them twice when they rejoin the main camp, shoulders brushing as they walk. 

**III.**

**Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia**

“Cheese,” the woman behind the counter smiles at him and for a moment, Sam just drunkenly stares. 

It’s not what she really said, but this many beers and shots and maybe something else in, it’s hard to remember that it’s just her accent. 

“Uh, yeah, cheers,” he says, or slurs. It probably sounds like cheese to her too. 

Australia is even weirder than advertised, all of it throwing him off kilter. The earth is too red, the sky too blue, all of it familiar enough to be even stranger when it’s not the same. And for all his trouble to make it here, he hasn’t even gotten to see one koala. 

When he makes it outside, lukewarm gas station hot dogs in his hands, Riley is staring up at the moon, round and blue, with a dopey smile on his face. 

“Look at that,” he says, pointing up, while Sam is figuring out how to hand Riley’s dog over without falling on his ass. 

“Fuck off Riley,” Sam says with absolutely no heat, just habit, as he tries not to trip on his own feet. 

Using his first name is weird, saying Riley instead of Scott and getting back Sam instead of Wilson, but they’re on leave and the opposite feels weirder. They practically had lived and nearly died by each other’s side for years, on a thousand spots on the globe. By now they'd together when they jumped out of airplanes, climbed mountains, raced rivers and bled on each other more times than he could count. 

And when no one wanted to admit they’d been instrumental in saving their dumb asses. That’s how they’d gotten leave in the first place, the current dickhead officer trying to keep them out of sight and out of mind as he explains the most recent clusterfuck in a way that sounds good enough to get him back to the right hemisphere. 

He’d bitched about it, while Riley smiled indulgently and gamely tried to get them both killed by all of Australia’s attractions and accessible wildlife. 

“It’s just the moon,” Sam says, dropping on his ass while thrusting the dog in the general direction of Riley’s face. It’s not that impressive, it’s not as if there’s not way more light pollution here than the thousand anonymous hillsides and deserts they’ve run through with gear on their backs and rifles in their hands. 

“But _look_ at her, shining like a diamond, like a new one, coming up out the dark earth,” he says, still staring up as he eats. It’s got that mix of ketchup, mayo, no mustard he loves and Sam doesn’t know when he learned by heart. 

He'd rag on Riley's incredibly hick ass, or his sudden aspirations to be Shakespeare right now, but he's too busy scarfing down his own hot dog, suddenly ravenous. 

Riley elbows him, gesturing at the moon with his mouth full and sauces on his chin. Sam ignores him. That’s when he starts with it: "Sam. Sam. Sammy. Sam-Jam. Sama-lama-ding-dong," until Sam has to say "Jesus, Riley, I’m about to revoke your first name privileges," which only makes him laugh: “Well my first name isn't Jesus and I'd like to see you try."

Sam takes a bite of his hot dog in retaliation, which leads to slight tussle on the concrete he knows he'll regret when he's sore in the morning. But that’s still far away. 

For now, he lets Riley collapse next to him, both of them on their backs, staring up at the stars like the hybrid of tourists and drunk American servicemen they are. 

It surprises him when he realizes that he’s content. Sam hasn’t felt that in a while, maybe since last leave at his mother’s house, feeling awkward and tongue tied and unsettled. 

They love each other, they just don’t understand each other. She wants him to come home. Sam wants to fly. And even if he didn’t, he can’t be the son she wants, fit the mold she built. 

It’s the sort of thing he’s said to Riley, or implied, at a thousand shitty bars and air bases, bored at watch or waiting their turn for whatever thing they’re in line for then. 

They know each other, probably better than anyone else on the planet, miles of training and combat and the spaces in between spent together, the years before discussed and dissected in one way or another. 

Maybe that’s sad, now that he thinks about it, blue clouds scraping by the moon like a country song, the kind Riley likes to hum under his breath before they jump out of planes or firefights start. The name Bocephus floats through his mind but that can’t be right.

Then Riley’s blonde, tanned face swims into his vision, with those muddy creek eyes, an arm out to leverage him up, and none of that matters. 

Leave with Riley is the best thing, his only starting to sober up brain informs him. He’s fun and they go out and party and dance and so far, they’ve spent every day together, neither sneaking off with someone ready and willing to get naked. 

Which is weird, his brain notes, the way it has before, more notorious now that it’s just the two of them on leave. 

By now, Sam knows he likes boys better than girls, and how to keep that from his teammates. 

He has no idea what Riley likes, or if he even likes, beyond beer, chocolate cake, horses and trying to get himself killed alongside Sam on ATVs, helicopters and whatever else they can get to go stupid fast. 

Including themselves, racing like kids back to their hotel room, split considering cost and convenience. 

When they manage to stumble inside, bending to take their shoes off, Sam looks up to a wicked grin on Riley’s face. 

Before he can say “Riley Butler Scott, don’t you dare,” Riley is on Sam’s bed, bouncing on his bare feet. It gives an ominous creak when Sam tackles him, wrestling like puppies. 

Eventually, Sam manages to grab him from behind, wrapping around him like a demented octopus. Weirdly it’s more comfortable, a hard armful of muscle, the bed too soft normally. 

“And stay down,” he whispers right in Riley’s ear, arms bracketing him. “Fine” he says, wriggling like he’s settling in. 

And then he keeps wriggling. 

Enough for little Sam to take notice. 

It’s obvious he’s teasing, but it’s too much suddenly, the small slice of freckled shoulder in Sam’s vision, how warm and solid he is in his arms, the curled skin at the corner of his mouth from his smile. 

Sam puts it in his mouth and _bites_. 

The effect is immediate, Riley grinds fully into Sam now, and his hips thrust to meet him. It’s not a joke anymore. 

He bites again, the back of his neck now, and it’s clear that Riley really, really likes that. 

They were doing something everyone but Bill Clinton would consider sexual relations. And since there’s no deniability now, Sam slides his hand forward, over the ridge of Riley’s hipbone, to settle fully over him, working him through the soaked, straining cloth of his underwear. 

As it moves, Sam’s thumb brushes the still healing scar dug into his pale middle by shrapnel and Riley shudders in his arms. He sucks an apology into his skin, suddenly perversely glad that from this angle he can’t see the Angel or her scorching gaze, perched on Riley’s shoulder, reminding Sam of his sins. 

Time goes red and hot and liquid, and Sam doesn’t know if it’s over fast or slow, or if they finished together. 

What he knows is that he’s sore and sticky and sleepy and not ready to process what just happened. Instead he peels whatever clothes he still has on with a wince and reaches for the light. 

Riley flinches. 

The thought comes to him as if from underwater, what Riley might be expecting him to do. He might not know anything about his dating history, but he knows other things. 

“It’s fine, man. I just wanna get to bed,” and Riley nods, solemn. Scared. There’s a million ways this could get ugly. 

Maybe it would if Sam were that kind of guy, but he isn’t. He likes Riley, that’s all there is to it. Might take a while to prove it, but they’ve still got a couple days off. 

So Sam hits the switch and sends them into the dark. 

Tentatively, he reaches out to Riley, gone stiff, holding him gently. After a second, Riley tucks himself into Sam’s neck. 

He’s still there when Sam wakes up in the morning, sore and dry mouthed. 

“Breakfast,” is all Sam can say, petting at Riley’s hair, marveling all over again at how it catches the light. 

“Shower first,” Riley says after a long time, staring with those unreadable eyes. 

After a second, Sam realizes it’s an invitation. 

He grins and Riley smiles back. 

**II.**

**The USS Chester Phillips, Indian Ocean, off the Horn of Africa**

For a moment, the sunlight is completely blinding. 

The onslaught is so total it even overwhelms the sounds and scents of all the movement on deck. At least part of that is from being below deck for so long, in the dim, windowless halls of the ship. 

Technically speaking, Sam isn’t supposed to be up here. But that’s never been something that’s stopped him. 

And the fresh air is worth it, what’s down below was a mix of the worst cooped up, stale, body heat infused atmosphere Sam’s ever been in, and he’s literally pulled men out of trench latrines. 

The worst had probably been the nameless sailor with the impressive maroon scar on his forehead telling him it was a spring meadow when compared to a submarine. That was about the moment Sam decided to head topside. 

The bruise on his shoulder throbs dully as he practically body slams the heavy metal door to make it outside. 

He should be resting, he knows, but he’s been having trouble sleeping lately, or even staying still. 

There’s no one with him, because there’s just the three of them now, after Baker didn’t make it back. Heyer is still bedridden. And Scott is nowhere to be found. 

Sam doesn’t know if that’s what he wants or not. 

There had been a sharp coil of pleasure when he’d found himself turning on his heel, newly deployed on hot sands in a country he couldn’t name, to a call of “Hey Snap!”. 

He hadn’t been able to help the grin or the sarcasm: “Man, no one’s called me that since _Basic_. Or are people still calling you Malibu Ken?”, easy to mock the early nicknames that didn’t stick. 

And Scott, already with a deep bush tan and a split lip had smiled one of those smiles. Then immediately winced at the way it strained the cut. 

What he’d had to say had been more useful to Sam than any of the briefing or shit-for-brains officers around them. 

The two of them were the only ones speaking the same language, as far as Sam could tell. And it was soothing to have someone so familiar, all too easy to get used to his breathing in the next cot all over again. 

Nice to give him shit like, “Man, I’m surprised that fucking tattoo hasn’t done you in yet, it _has_ to be bad luck.” Scott smiled while taping behind his ear. “Aw, you’re just jealous of my good fortune.” 

Even the mission had been weirdly easy, even if they’d only played at war together before: endless drills and training exercises and practice. Sam felt like they’d always been by each other’s sides, that they’d always known how the other moved, born and bred in the same litter. In a way, they kind of were. 

His shoulder keeps aching under the sudden lash of the harsh sun, doubled by the water, burnished like a silver shield. Scott probably gave him the bruise, more than the enemy did. 

The two of them already close in that little scrap of a building, more like a shack, taking turns out shooting out of the narrow excuse for a window when a bulk grenade had bounced in. They had dropped flat on the dirty ground and tried to cover each other. 

It almost funny now, that it had been more like a fight, each one of them trying to shield the other, dog tags smacking the other in the face. Only the grenade, some ancient reject piece of crap that had probably bounced around a thousand terrible regimes until it finally reached them, had failed to explode. 

They had registered that, thrown it out, and kept firing. 

When the smoke had cleared, there were piles of useless grenades everywhere and a throbbing in Sam's shoulder. 

It's the pain he's trying to focus on. Half a world away, it’s Father’s Day. Or was. 

There had been some grumbling in the crew when the captain had slotted them into the call schedule, bumping a few names out, but between the men carted aboard injured but not dead, and the intel that had only come with them, there wasn’t real resentment. 

It’s still not easy, calling his mom instead of his dad, dead of a heart attack at the pulpit when Sam was twelve. It had convinced him then and there that there wasn’t a God, or that if there was Sam didn’t want to know him. 

He doesn’t think the sting will ever go away, knowing that his father will not ever know him, not the man now, or the one he was at thirteen or fifteen or eighteen. It wasn’t where the trouble started, exactly. 

His whole life, Sam’s mom had said that if they’d lived in a bad neighborhood, or too close to the water or cliffs, he’d would have dived in head first for the thrill of it. 

She’d kept him on the straight and narrow as long as she could, both numb and reeling from his father’s death, until Sam had been old enough to choose being shot at for a living. 

For all her strength, she’d always known a losing battle when she saw it. Sam doesn’t think she’s fully forgiven him yet, but she seems more at peace now. 

It takes him a moment to realize some other instinct has been guiding him, leading him to where Scott is leaning on the blazing railing, a crumpled water bottle dangling from his hands. 

He offers it wordlessly to Sam, and he’s surprised to find the acrid burn of illicit alcohol in his mouth when he swigs. 

“How’d you get that?” he says when he stops coughing. “Traded for it,” he says, eyes fixed somewhere out past the horizon, even though there’s nothing to look at. 

“What, for a blowjob? Had to cost you” he says, alarmed by the way Scott’s not smiling, not even close. He had been in that hut, before. This might be the first time Sam’s seen him this serious. 

“The call,” he says, like he’s expecting to get yelled at. It takes a minute for Sam to process what he means. “The- your _call_?” he says, sounding dumb to his own ears. 

“No one to call,” Scott says, shoulders rising, because it doesn’t sound like there’s no one to pick up, more like no one he wants to talk to and Sam has enough of his mother in him to know when to drop it. 

“That’s new,” he says instead, after a beat, pointing a finger at the still healing tattoo high on his bicep, practically on his shoulder, peeking out from the edge of his sleeve. 

It’s the most undressed they’ve been, the feeling almost naked, after weeks of body armor and combat dress. 

Scott does smile now, just a little. 

It’s not an unexpected design, the Angel of Mercy, but she’s both beautiful and fierce on Scott’s skin, descending hard faced into battle, instead of beaming beatifically with her hands clasped in prayer. 

“Had leave, just before this,” Scott says after the silence, sounding more even keeled. “You got any yet?” and Sam takes the olive branch. 

“Nah. But I do have this,” he says, yanking at the collar of his shirt. It’s a bullet scar that traces along the back of his neck, almost between his shoulder blades, a close call if there ever was one. 

“Nice,” Scott says, smiling for real now. But only for a moment. 

“Your dad okay?” he says, like swallowing glass, like he’s making himself do it. 

“He’s dead. Just my mom. Back in Harlem,” the words still sounding too heavy in his mouth. Scott hums, back to scanning the horizon. 

“That’s where they’ll ship me back, if I die in a combat zone,” he says, trying for gallows humor. 

It doesn’t work. “They’d have to send me to Arlington, I guess,” Scott says. As far as Sam knows, there's no religious preference on his dog tags.

“Funny. I’ve never even been to Washington,” he adds and they burst into helpless giggles, passing the bottle back and forth until it’s empty. 

Later on, they stumble back below deck, to some children’s movie some suits back in DC that haven't been here either okayed for their boatful of ruthless killers. 

“At least it’s not a fucking Captain America movie,” Scott grumbles, not even upset. It’s funny, watching some cute kids turn into superheroes in a Disney movie. Soothing. 

He lets it take him, eyes slipping shut in the warm hold, Scott solid next to him. 

Sam falls asleep on his shoulder, resting better than he has in weeks. 

**I.**

**En route to Lackland AFB, Texas, United States of America**

Sam Wilson makes the mistake of pressing his hand on the frame of the bus door to leverage himself inside. 

It’s like putting his hand on a skillet, heated by the Texas sun, blazing even if it’s still low in the sky. 

Had he been superstitious, maybe he would have taken it as a sign, but he wasn’t, out of sheer stubbornness more than anything else. But the sting was throbbing and deep. 

If he thought the bus had been built sometime after he was born he might have worried about school standards, but the ancient grey machine, with new mesh on the windows, had clearly passed its days of ferrying kids years ago. All the others in its class were probably ferrying prisoners now, decked out in the same way. 

This one was being loaded with what was probably a mix of both, and wasn’t that the country in a nutshell. 

When he first saw it, and not for the first time, he wondered just what, exactly, he was doing here. _Because how else are you going to jump out of an airplane without getting yelled at for it,_ a voice in his head said and he smiled. Not every reason he had, but enough of one. 

The delay made by the burn, as he shakes his hand out and curses, gets him jostled, practically lifted up the steps by the gaggle of crewcutted, whey-faced, past their high school prime jocks trying to board after him. 

For a second, his vision goes red in a way that has nothing to do with the heat. 

The angry part of Sam, the one that got him here, vows that they won’t last. The other part of him is still angry, but he can hear his mother’s voice in his head asking him to slow down, to just think for once. 

It’s not really what wins out, it’s Sam unerring sense of what fights he can win and which ones are worth it anyway. 

He can get them later, he can be fitter, faster, better, he promises himself. They’ll wash out and he’ll get through. 

The small pause is still enough to create a small jam and in the moment between when the rest of them board and Sam picks a seat, he realizes something very quickly. 

So far, everyone else had room to spread out and grab a seat on their own. But they’re all taken now and they’ll have to double up. 

On seats meant for children, with aggressive, brick shithouse sized guys that might just have chosen PJ school as a shortcut to special forces. He’s not that big and that’s not one of the reasons why he’s here, either. 

That’s when he picks his seat. 

It’s the space to the right of a smaller guy, dreamily staring out of the window, blonde head turned into a halo by the light, even though he’s a strapping, squared-jawed poster boy with a mane of slicked back dirty blonde hair. 

He’s not sitting with his legs spread and, as Sam glares into the bus, he tilts his head, just a little, and smiles at him for a split second, like they’re friends. Like he saved Sam a seat. 

It’s an easy choice, two long strides to reach him and settle into the sticky faux leather seats, skin sealed wherever it touches. 

His seatmate smiles that small mysterious smile and looks back to the window. From what Sam has seen, his eyes are the color of muddy water, blue-green-brown, and just as unreadable. 

The bitching from the rest of them over the seating, grumbling from the early birds, and slowly building murderous expression in the stone faces of their uniformed minders makes Sam decide it’s best to get away from the crowded aisles too. There might be an itch building under his skin, eager for a fight, but this isn’t the place, he tries to remember. 

His mother managed to teach him that, at least. Even if she had also told him he could do anything, a perfect 4.0 high school GPA. But Sam can’t think of anything better to do with it than this: get paid to go do crazy awesome stuff and save lives while he’s at it. 

She always knew he had an adrenaline habit and little to no interest in an office job. Even before he’d lost his father, when she asks him if that’s it. He probably would have approved of Sam’s choice, of rescuing and the forging in fire, if he’d lived. It stings that he can’t ask. 

But it’s what he’s thinking about, the challenge, the _want_ to make himself into someone better, to be tested and proven, when he reminds himself why chose to leave the fight for later. 

Besides, he doesn’t know if the guy on his left would have his back, anyway. Sam doesn’t ask him. Instead, he follows his seatmate’s eyes out of the window. 

There’s just a great stretch of nothing on the other side of the glass, from what Sam can see, careful not to lean in. 

His seatmate could just be a space cadet, or he could be genuinely crazy. Or something else entirely, because maybe the vague earthy smell coming off his clothes, closer to pot than it is far away, could explain it. 

But he looks back out, just for something to do. And then, like a curtain has been pulled from his eyes, he can see the distant dust of running horses, far ahead. 

It’s later that Sam will find out that it’s the smell of stables clinging to his skin instead, from years and years on a thousand nameless ranches. 

They’ll do plenty of talking on the ride, neither of them with a newspaper to pass the time, calling out crossword answers to those who ask after conferring. He’s not stupid, the man next to him, but he can be one hell of a dumbass. 

As it is, Sam leans back, calmer now, almost smiling at the small inked shadow curled behind his ear: a carefully drawn horseshoe. 

“So you like horses, huh?” he says, unable to help himself, no matter how clearly he can hear his mother’s voice, scolding him inside his skull, _why can’t you ever hold your tongue?_

“Doesn’t everybody?” he says back, though Sam actually wouldn’t know, smiling again. 

They’re almost reflexive, his smiles, even while being shot at in a downed helicopter and worse, Sam will find out. 

Even at funerals, which might have been a problem if he wasn’t a PJ. But half their social calendar is wakes and burials and by then all of them know him well enough to know and not begrudge him. Sam hates that when he was a kid, that was his social calendar too. 

But before all that, Sam doesn’t suppress the urge to smile back. 

“Sam Wilson,” he says, putting his hand out. “Riley Scott,” he says, hand strong, hard and calloused enough for Sam to reassess him. 

There’s no real trace Sam can pick in his accent either, find out later that dragged too often though the ranches of California and the greater Southwest to pick any up. But even then Sam gets a vague sense of the Wild West, bringing to mind the Earp brothers, saloons and gunshots at high noon. 

Sam himself knows the Harlem is still heavy in his voice, and it will take him years to shave it away. Only once will his partner tell him he misses it. 

But for now they snap up at the sound of their most exasperated minder, younger than the other but just as uniformed, yelling from the front of the bus with a voice that seemed to come from a much bigger man: “Just sit down so we can go, no one here has cooties”. 

Helpless, Sam smirks conspiratorially at Scott and reaches for the seat back in front of them. Like they’d planned it, Scott does too. 

They trace two circles, and three dots inside of them, on the hot metal, on either side of the bird in flight stamped onto it. 

Sam likes him, somehow because and in spite of himself. 

Maybe it's the curl of a smile that seems to linger in the seam of his mouth, even when he turns back to the lonesome herd. 

After a minute they're off, on the way to what might be the rest of their lives, and maybe short ones at that. 

It’s easier with a friend. 


	2. Author's note

Let’s start with the title being [a Bible quote](https://biblehub.com/jeremiah/20-9.htm) and the fact that pararescue is [an incredible field, that I cribbed some stories ](https://specialoperations.com/808/pararescue/)[from this amazing dude](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/08/adventure-rescue-pararescue-mountain-climber-air-force/) and they really do have the [Angel of Mercy as their emblem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Air_Force_Pararescue#/media/File:United_States_Air_Force_Pararescue_Emblem.svg).

The timeline for this is a mess, because writers can’t do math and [the MCU can’t either](https://www.polygon.com/2017/7/10/15947528/spider-man-homecoming-marvel-timeline), which is why times aren't labeled above. But roughly the incidents are chronologically set in 2003 - 2007 - 2008 - 2010 - 2012. They don’t get the suits until 2010 because that’s the year I’m using for the setting of Iron Man 2 and I don’t think it makes sense beforehand; and if Winter Soldier is set in 2014, Sam needs to have left the military about two years prior. This also means that [Don’t Ask Don’t Tell ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_ask,_don%27t_tell)was in effect for most of it, as it was repealed in 2011. In keeping with that, I tried to make the locations as logical as possible for that time period, so they are, in order of appearance, [Bakhmala](https://geographic.org/geographic_names/name.php?uni=6312217&fid=23&c=afghanistan) (which is a [real place in that area](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spera,_Khost_Province)), [Ali Air Base](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Air_Base) which would have been called Tallil at the time, on leave [from Robertson Barracks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robertson_Barracks), I made up the [Chester Phillips ](https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Chester_Phillips)thinking of military naming conventions but there's a [couple](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ras_Kamboni) of [reasons ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Enduring_Freedom_%E2%80%93_Horn_of_Africa)they could be there, and [Lackland is where PJs train.](https://www.airforce.com/careers/detail/pararescue)

I didn't make up the [cheese/cheers ](https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/us-president-barack-obama-tries-speaking-the-local-lingo-at-dinner-in-canberra/news-story/53dc3c389fccc7889752f2b9a10ca101)confusion, [Bocephus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Williams_Jr.) or "[Shama-lama-ding-dong](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYwqVEEMmPk)". And yes, they are watching _[Sky High](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405325/)_.

What I did have to make up is Riley himself, played in this fic by Scott Eastwood because [he](https://laurelscanary.tumblr.com/post/137663445039/scott-eastwood-in-the-new-suicide-squad-trailer) [looks](https://gipsy-sunshine.tumblr.com/post/170091688812/nate-lambert-jake-pentecostbonus) [the](https://dailyscotteastwood.tumblr.com/post/148123407564/suicide-squad-exclusive-behind-the-scenes) [part,](https://dailyscotteastwood.tumblr.com/post/174033824359/pacific-rim-uprising-movie-clip-shatterdome) but his general vibe is more [this picture of Tab Hunter](https://warrenkoles.tumblr.com/post/188569983066/profoundgaiety-howdoyoulikethemeggrolls). His last name is both a joke on that and because of _Ridley_ Scott as he made[ Black Hawk Down](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hawk_Down_\(film\)) which features the very real and awesome PJ Tim Wilkinson and this fic draws heavily from both the film and the book, which also has non-exploding grenades. His middle name, to honor the cowboy angle, is [Wild Bill Hickok's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Bill_Hickok). 

I also had to pick and chose for Sam's history [because that's how comics do](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_\(comics\)#Fictional_character_biography) and the [MCU too](https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Falcon). But I liked the idea of his dad being a minister, him being from Harlem since Steve is from Brooklyn, and the Snap thing is so ridiculous I had to joke about it. 

Finally (I promise) and this is a tiny quibble, most people seem to think the [Khalid Khandil mission ](https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Khalid_Khandil)was about apprehending Khandil but what Sam says to Steve is [" _flying a night mission, standard PJ rescue op"._](https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Riley)Now, of course, Sam's not telling him everything, but he's not lying and there's no reason for him to use the word rescue if it wasn't true. And I liked their final mission being a rescue gone both right and wrong, you know?

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning, I want crazy on the research for this, so it's all in the next chapter.


End file.
